Download or read book The Crooked Timber Of Humanity written by Isaiah Berlin and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-06-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Isaiah Berlin is regarded by many as one of the greatest historians of ideas of his time. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity, he argues passionately, eloquently, and subtly, that what he calls 'the Great Goods' of human aspiration - liberty, justice, equality - do not cohere and never can. Pluralism and variety of thought are not avoidable compromises, but the glory of civilisation. In an age of increasing ideological fundamentalism and intolerance we need to listen to Isaiah Berlin more carefully than ever before.
Download or read book The Crooked Timber of Humanity written by Isaiah Berlin and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Proper Study Of Mankind written by Isaiah Berlin and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-12-31 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘He becomes everyman’s guide to everything exciting in the history of ideas’ New York Review of Books Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century, and one of the finest writers. The Proper Study Of Mankind selects some of his best essays in which his insights both illuminate the past and offer a key to the burning issues of today. The full (and enormous) range of his work is represented here, from the exposition of his most distinctive doctrine - pluralism - to studies of Machiavelli, Tolstoy, Churchill and Roosevelt. In these pages he encapsulates the principal movements that characterise the modern age: romanticism, historicism, Fascism, relativism, irrationalism and nationalism. His ideas are always tied to the people who conceived them, so that abstractions are brought alive. EDITED BY HENRY HARDY AND ROGER HAUSHEER AND WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY ANDREW MARR
Download or read book Kant s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim written by Amélie Rorty and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-29 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume discuss the questions at the core of Kant's pioneering work in the philosophy of history.
Download or read book Empire of Humanity written by Michael Barnett and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-03 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empire of Humanity explores humanitarianism’s remarkable growth from its humble origins in the early nineteenth century to its current prominence in global life. In contrast to most contemporary accounts of humanitarianism that concentrate on the last two decades, Michael Barnett ties the past to the present, connecting the antislavery and missionary movements of the nineteenth century to today’s peacebuilding missions, the Cold War interventions in places like Biafra and Cambodia to post–Cold War humanitarian operations in regions such as the Great Lakes of Africa and the Balkans; and the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863 to the emergence of the major international humanitarian organizations of the twentieth century. Based on extensive archival work, close encounters with many of today’s leading international agencies, and interviews with dozens of aid workers in the field and at headquarters, Empire of Humanity provides a history that is both global and intimate. Avoiding both romanticism and cynicism, Empire of Humanity explores humanitarianism’s enduring themes, trends, and, most strikingly, ethical ambiguities. Humanitarianism hopes to change the world, but the world has left its mark on humanitarianism. Humanitarianism has undergone three distinct global ages—imperial, postcolonial, and liberal—each of which has shaped what humanitarianism can do and what it is. The world has produced not one humanitarianism, but instead varieties of humanitarianism. Furthermore, Barnett observes that the world of humanitarianism is divided between an emergency camp that wants to save lives and nothing else and an alchemist camp that wants to remove the causes of suffering. These camps offer different visions of what are the purpose and principles of humanitarianism, and, accordingly respond differently to the same global challenges and humanitarianism emergencies. Humanitarianism has developed a metropolis of global institutions of care, amounting to a global governance of humanity. This humanitarian governance, Barnett observes, is an empire of humanity: it exercises power over the very individuals it hopes to emancipate. Although many use humanitarianism as a symbol of moral progress, Barnett provocatively argues that humanitarianism has undergone its most impressive gains after moments of radical inhumanity, when the "international community" believes that it must atone for its sins and reduce the breach between what we do and who we think we are. Humanitarianism is not only about the needs of its beneficiaries; it also is about the needs of the compassionate.
Download or read book The Crooked Timber of Humanity written by Isaiah Berlin and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1992 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With great eloquence and erudition, our most eminent living philosopher traces the connections between the ideas of the past and the political and social cataclysms of our time.
Download or read book Twilight of the Elites written by Chris Hayes and published by Crown. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful and original argument that traces the roots of our present crisis of authority to an unlikely source: the meritocracy. Over the past decade, Americans watched in bafflement and rage as one institution after another – from Wall Street to Congress, the Catholic Church to corporate America, even Major League Baseball – imploded under the weight of corruption and incompetence. In the wake of the Fail Decade, Americans have historically low levels of trust in their institutions; the social contract between ordinary citizens and elites lies in tatters. How did we get here? With Twilight of the Elites, Christopher Hayes offers a radically novel answer. Since the 1960s, as the meritocracy elevated a more diverse group of men and women into power, they learned to embrace the accelerating inequality that had placed them near the very top. Their ascension heightened social distance and spawned a new American elite--one more prone to failure and corruption than any that came before it. Mixing deft political analysis, timely social commentary, and deep historical understanding, Twilight of the Elites describes how the society we have come to inhabit – utterly forgiving at the top and relentlessly punitive at the bottom – produces leaders who are out of touch with the people they have been trusted to govern. Hayes argues that the public's failure to trust the federal government, corporate America, and the media has led to a crisis of authority that threatens to engulf not just our politics but our day-to-day lives. Upending well-worn ideological and partisan categories, Hayes entirely reorients our perspective on our times. Twilight of the Elites is the defining work of social criticism for the post-bailout age.
Download or read book The Crooked Timber of Humanity written by Isaiah Berlin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-02 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."--Immanuel Kant Isaiah Berlin was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century--an activist of the intellect who marshaled vast erudition and eloquence in defense of the endangered values of individual liberty and moral and political plurality. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity he exposes the links between the ideas of the past and the social and political cataclysms of our own time: between the Platonic belief in absolute truth and the lure of authoritarianism; between the eighteenth-century reactionary ideologue Joseph de Maistre and twentieth-century Fascism; between the romanticism of Schiller and Byron and the militant--and sometimes genocidal--nationalism that convulses the modern world. This new edition features a revised text that supplants all previous versions, a new foreword in which award-winning novelist John Banville discusses Berlin's life and ideas, particularly his defense of pluralism, and a substantial new appendix that provides rich context, including letters by Berlin and previously uncollected writings, most notably his virtuoso review of Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy.
Download or read book Freedom From the Market written by Mike Konczal and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The progressive economics writer redefines the national conversation about American freedom “Mike Konczal [is] one of our most powerful advocates of financial reform‚ [a] heroic critic of austerity‚ and a huge resource for progressives.”—Paul Krugman Health insurance, student loan debt, retirement security, child care, work-life balance, access to home ownership—these are the issues driving America’s current political debates. And they are all linked, as this brilliant and timely book reveals, by a single question: should we allow the free market to determine our lives? In the tradition of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, noted economic commentator Mike Konczal answers this question with a resounding no. Freedom from the Market blends passionate political argument and a bold new take on American history to reveal that, from the earliest days of the republic, Americans have defined freedom as what we keep free from the control of the market. With chapters on the history of the Homestead Act and land ownership, the eight-hour work day and free time, social insurance and Social Security, World War II day cares, Medicare and desegregation, free public colleges, intellectual property, and the public corporation, Konczal shows how citizens have fought to ensure that everyone has access to the conditions that make us free. At a time when millions of Americans—and more and more politicians—are questioning the unregulated free market, Freedom from the Market offers a new narrative, and new intellectual ammunition, for the fight that lies ahead.
Download or read book The Hedgehog and the Fox written by Isaiah Berlin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-02 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War and Peace. Although there have been many interpretations of the adage, Berlin uses it to mark a fundamental distinction between human beings who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system. Applied to Tolstoy, the saying illuminates a paradox that helps explain his philosophy of history: Tolstoy was a fox, but believed in being a hedgehog. One of Berlin's most celebrated works, this extraordinary essay offers profound insights about Tolstoy, historical understanding, and human psychology. This new edition features a revised text that supplants all previous versions, English translations of the many passages in foreign languages, a new foreword in which Berlin biographer Michael Ignatieff explains the enduring appeal of Berlin's essay, and a new appendix that provides rich context, including excerpts from reviews and Berlin's letters, as well as a startling new interpretation of Archilochus's epigram.
Download or read book Power in Ideas written by Kirsten Adams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-13 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Element develops an analytical framework for understanding the role of ideas in political life and communication. Power in Ideas argues that the empirical study of ideas should combine interpretive approaches to derive meaning and understand influence with quantitative analysis to help determine the reach, spread, and impact of ideas. This Element illustrates this approach through three case studies: the idea of reparations in Ta-Nehisi Coates's “The Case for Reparations,” the idea of free expression in Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook policy speech at Georgetown University, and the idea of universal basic income in Andrew Yang's “Freedom Dividend.” Power in Ideas traces the landscapes and spheres within which these ideas emerged and were articulated, the ways they were encoded in discourse, the fields they traveled across, and how they became powerful.
Download or read book Freedom and Its Betrayal written by Isaiah Berlin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-25 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These celebrated lectures constitute one of Isaiah Berlin's most concise, accessible, and convincing presentations of his views on human freedom—views that later found expression in such famous works as "Two Concepts of Liberty" and were at the heart of his lifelong work on the Enlightenment and its critics. When they were broadcast on BBC radio in 1952, the lectures created a sensation and confirmed Berlin’s reputation as an intellectual who could speak to the public in an appealing and compelling way. A recording of only one of the lectures has survived, but Henry Hardy has recreated them all here from BBC transcripts and Berlin’s annotated drafts. Hardy has also added, as an appendix to this new edition, a revealing text of "Two Concepts" based on Berlin’s earliest surviving drafts, which throws light on some of the issues raised by the essay. And, in a new foreword, historian Enrique Krauze traces the origin of Berlin’s idea of negative freedom to his rejection of the notion that the creation of the State of Israel left Jews with only two choices: to emigrate to Israel or to renounce Jewish identity.
Download or read book The Half Made World written by Felix Gilman and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fantastical reimagining of the American West which draws its influence from steampunk, the American western tradition, and magical realism The world is only half made. What exists has been carved out amidst a war between two rival factions: the Line, paving the world with industry and claiming its residents as slaves; and the Gun, a cult of terror and violence that cripples the population with fear. The only hope at stopping them has seemingly disappeared—the Red Republic that once battled the Gun and the Line, and almost won. Now they're just a myth, a bedtime story parents tell their children, of hope. To the west lies a vast, uncharted world, inhabited only by the legends of the immortal and powerful Hill People, who live at one with the earth and its elements. Liv Alverhyusen, a doctor of the new science of psychology, travels to the edge of the made world to a spiritually protected mental institution in order to study the minds of those broken by the Gun and the Line. In its rooms lies an old general of the Red Republic, a man whose shattered mind just may hold the secret to stopping the Gun and the Line. And either side will do anything to understand how. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Personal Impressions written by Isaiah Berlin and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-06-30 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This enthusiastically received collection contains Isaiah Berlin's appreciation of seventeen people of unusual distinction in the intellectual or political world - sometimes in both. The names of many of them are familiar - Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Chaim Weizmann, Albert Einstein, L. B. Namier, J. L. Austin, Maurice Bowra. With the exception of Roosevelt he met them all, and he knew many of them well. For this new edition four new portraits have been added, including recollections of Virginia Woolf and Edmund Wilson. The volume ends with a vivid and moving account of Berlin's meetings in Russia with Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova in 1945 and 1956.
Download or read book Deception written by Ziyad Marar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of us think we are about 15 per cent cleverer, nicer, more attractive and better drivers than others think we are. It seems deception begins at home. After all the most convincing liars convince themselves first. Sellers and buyers, parents and children, friends and lovers must conceal from each other the unutterable truth that they don't believe or want the same things. In this book, Ziyad Marar throws a revealing light on the many ways deception is woven into the texture of human life: our wiring leaves us easily suckered by persuasive illusions, while our contradictory desires (for sex and honesty, money and kindness, for cake and losing weight) force us to cook up self-serving stories. We manage flattering impressions with effortless skill, while pretending our sins and self-indulgences are beyond our control.Drawing on insights from philosophy, psychology and literature, Marar explores the implications for living well in the shadow of Kant's humbling thought that "out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made".
Download or read book Beauty Matters written by Peg Zeglin Brand and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2000-05-22 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beauty has captured human interest since before Plato, but how, why, and to whom does beauty matter in today's world? Whose standard of beauty motivates African Americans to straighten their hair? What inspires beauty queens to measure up as flawless objects for the male gaze? Why does a French performance artist use cosmetic surgery to remake her face into a composite of the master painters' version of beauty? How does beauty culture perceive the disabled body? Is the constant effort to remain young and thin, often at considerable economic and emotional expense, ethically justifiable? Provocative essays by an international group of scholars discuss aesthetics in aesthetics, the arts, the tools of fashion, the materials of decoration, and the big business of beautification—beauty matters—to reveal the ways gender, race, and sexual orientation have informed the concept of beauty and driven us to become more beautiful. Here, Kant rubs shoulders with Calvin Klein. Beauty Matters draws from visual art, dance, cultural history, and literary and feminist theory to explore the values and politics of beauty. Various philosophical perspectives on ethics and aesthetics emerge from this penetrating book to determine and reveal that beauty is never disinterested.
Download or read book No Straight Thing Was Ever Made written by Urvashi Bahuguna and published by India Viking. This book was released on 2021-08 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a writer of astonishing talents, No Straight Thing Was Ever Made bravely discusses the many facets of living with mental illness As a person with mood disorders that sprung up in her late teens, Urvashi Bahuguna had to navigate being the first person in her Indian family to admit to and seek help for a mental illness. The changes and challenges which came with this admission and the actions that followed not only impacted who she became as a person but also everything around her-from her interpersonal relationships, both familial and romantic, to the way she walked among her friends and peers and the manner in which she connected with art, literature, popular culture, they all became new and unknown. Through these deeply honest essays that move between personal narratives, anecdotes from conversations and research-driven storytelling, Bahuguna traverses the opportunities and roadblocks that come her way with the tools she has available to her. From a writer of astonishing talents, No Straight ThingWas Ever Made bravely discusses the many facets of living with mental illness.
